by Dan Davis
And then, Ram's feet left the tiles underfoot.
Sifa and Te clung to the tables. Mael's body rose into the air, his eyes still wild and staring up with fury.
“The gravity,” Te shouted. “Hold on to something.”
Alina worked quickly with the bodies around her. She took rifles from two of them nearest to her, even as they all rose gently off the floor. Expertly, she unloaded the magazines and allowed them to float away but she stripped more magazines and loaded them into the rifles, stuffing a couple more into the waistband of her pants.
“What the hell is she doing,” Te said, clinging to the bench table.
“We need to stop her,” Sifa hissed. “Ram, we all rush her. Ready?”
“No way,” Ram said, holding himself away from the ceiling with one hand, fingers gripping the edge of the lighting strip. “Did you see that? She loaded live ammunition into those assault rifles. How fast do you think you're going to move in microgravity?”
By way of answer, Sifa jumped upward. That is, she pushed herself toward the ceiling but she did it with so much power that she shot up and crashed into the ceiling with a crack. She bounced off, clutching her head.
Alina busied herself pushing the marine's bodies toward the door. She glanced round at Ram, saw him staring.
“Come take one of these assault weapons,” she said.
Ram hesitated. If he took one, he'd essentially be agreeing to fire it. At who, the marines? If he was even just holding it when they finally broke in, they'd assume he'd been with Alina all along and no doubt they'd terminate him immediately.
Alina sighed at his indecision and pushed herself off the wall, heading toward Ram. She had perfect aim, gliding the ten meters with ease and alighting beside him with a weapon in each hand.
Across the other side of the room, Mael had somehow been rolled over so that he was face down. The blood pulsed out of his face and neck in a series of red orbs, shining in the low light.
“Ah,” Alina said, tutting. “I hoped he will have drowned by now. No such luck for Alina, eh?”
Ram realized suddenly that she was happy. She was enjoying herself.
“Here, hold one of these.” The huge woman shoved one of the weapons into his chest, which he took without thinking.
She pushed away from Ram, drifted over toward the floating form of Mael. His legs were drifting apart from each other, as were his arms. Alina stopped herself with a deft touch on the ceiling above and braced herself, wedging her mighty shoulders between the wall and ceiling.
“Do not kill him,” Sifa shouted. “Think of the mission. What's at stake. It is not too late.”
She brought up the assault rifle, which looked like a toy in her hands.
“It is too late,” Alina said. “For him.”
She fired a three-round burst at close range, straight into Mael's forehead. His neck jerked back and a fan of debris and pink blood shot up as his body turned and twisted down toward the floor.
Alina laughed. “Look, Ram,” she said. She pushed herself from the ceiling down to Mael's body, which she straddled with her knees. As she had done with Ram, in his room at night. “Ram, look, his skull is unbroken. They made him well.” She prodded the wound with the muzzle of her weapon.
Ram felt himself getting heavier, his guts being pulled downward inside his body.
“He's still not dead?” Te shouted.
“You still in there, Mael?” Alina said, laughing again. “Look, he has his eyes open.”
“ALINA.”
A voice boomed from the address system in the barracks.
“PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON AND STEP AWAY FROM HIM”
“That's the Director,” Sifa said. “Listen to her.”
“You did this, Zuma,” Alina shouted. “You wanted to make the best warrior, the one best at winning at all costs. Willing to kill everyone. Here I am. Your warrior. Winning.”
Ram drifted down toward the ground.
“NOT LIKE THIS,” Zuma thundered. “DISARM. NOW.”
“Diego?” Alina said. “Have they taken you?”
“Please,” Sifa said. “This is crazy.”
Alina shook her head, brought up her gun. “It is over, Mael,” she said. “You lost.”
The barracks doors opened and the marine poured through, firing as the came through. The rounds cracked and smashed the tiles all around.
Live rounds.
Not shock slugs like last time.
Alina fired a long burst into Mael, the rounds ripping into his face and head, this time showering blood and brains and skull all over the floor and wall.
She had neglected to brace herself properly and though the gravity was returning, she flew up and away, backward, still firing wildly. When she crashed into the other side of the room, the marines stopped firing. Presumably, they had been given orders to hold fire.
It was too late for Mael. The Marines could not save him.
The gravity came back as the rings were spun up to speed. It happened slow enough for Ram to land quite gently on his feet. Sifa and Te likewise stood, looking between Alina and Mael.
“Put your weapons down, now,” the leading marine shouted his voice artificially amplified with some augment tech. “Now, drop them now.”
Ram dropped his and put his hands up, stepping back.
“Fine,” Alina said. “All I wanted was him. You are all safe from me.”
She tossed her assault rifle to the ground and then tossed the spare magazines down, clattering beside it.
The bedroom doors unlocked and the other subjects came charging out. Finally released from their paralysis. Jun, Gondar, Genesis, Javi, Didem and Eziz They saw the body of their leader, his and head face shot to pieces.
They saw Alina and Ram with weapons at their feet.
Full of fury, they charged.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE – BATTLE
Genesis and Jun charged Alina, straight at her with no thought of tactics, unless their tactic was to rush her before she could react.
Te and Sifa were shouting to stop but Gondar and Javi rushed them, leaping over the body of their fallen hero and bounding up to them in just a few strides. Gondar’s and Javi’s faces were contorted with fury, obviously assuming they were with Alina. Ram wanted to shout a warning to his friends but he had his own problems.
Ram faced the fury of Eziz, who leaped the bench in between them and came on like a Hell demon from a horror game. Didem was hot on Eziz’s heels, growling bloody murder like a maniac.
“Wait,” Ram shouted, backing up as far as he could. “Just hold on a—”
Eziz feinted high and right then dove for Ram's knees, trying to take him down. But Ram expected it and jumped up, pushing off the wall and coming down with a knee driven into Eziz's mid-back.
Didem was on him, wrapping her arms around Ram's neck and both her legs around Ram's waist. Ram was bigger, though, and very much stronger so her grappling alone was never going to bring Ram down.
It didn't need to.
Didem was doing no more than slowing Ram down while Eziz recovered from the knee to his back. The Turkmen wrestler rolled into Ram's legs, tangling him up and taking him down with Didem clinging to his back.
Ram knew he was in trouble. He was breathing heavily from the effort and Didem was constricting his neck, still growling maniacally.
On his feet, he was bigger and stronger than either of his attackers. Maybe stronger even than both combined. Ram was taller, had at least ten centimeters reach on Eziz and much more than that on Didem. But on the ground he was vulnerable. All his muscle made him bulky and inflexible where Di was lithe as a snake. She was increasing pressure on his throat, trying to choke him so he threw his head back, hard, and cracked her in the nose, trying to get his hand up between her arm and his neck to provide a barrier.
It was a mistake. The vast gulf in experience between him and the others was barely comprehensible to him. They had years of wrestling experience to draw on, he had a couple months.
His skull walloped her hard but a single blow to the face for any of the subjects could never be more than a distraction. And Di wasn't even distracted. By throwing his head back, all he'd done was expose more of his throat to her thick forearm and she used the gap to slide her grip up higher, right up under his jaw and she tightened her grip.
Fighting for breath, Ram’s heart hammered in his ears, his vision began to cloud and darken from the edges as less oxygenated blood reached him.
Eziz heaved his shoulder into Ram's knees, driving him sideways, twisting and pushing to bring Ram down. The wall was just behind, he knew, if he could lean on it, he might keep his feet. Ram shuffled backward, trying to keep upright, Di choking him. His advantage was his greater mass and strength, he knew had to use it before they took him down. Ram pulled Di's arm away from his throat with both hands, leaned forward and threw her over his shoulder and crashed her down on to Eziz's back.
Ram, freed for the moment, jumped back and looked toward the shouts and sounds of fighting. His mind was whirring, freewheeling, he didn’t know what he should do next. Te and Sifa grappled Gondar and Javi. Neither was doing well, both being pounded between the tables, back to back, bloodied and struggling.
The marines were shouting now, screaming at Alina, at all of them to stop, to cease immediately or else.
Gen and Jun pressed Alina hard, both striking, circling but Alina changed direction and jabbed a front kick up into Gen's face. It knocked her back and Alina dived for the floor, strangely not going for either of her opponents.
She got to her knees, holding the assault rifle she had earlier dropped.
Zuma's voice shouted over the speakers, warning them all to stop at once.
Alina snapped her rifle up to her shoulder and opened fire, shredding the heads of Jun and Genesis in two short bursts. There was little blood but he distinctly saw both their skulls exploding into pieces and clouds of pink matter erupting from them as they fell. The noise was terrific, painful inside his ears.
Ram ducked low, hugging up against the wall. He glanced back for Eziz and Di, expecting to fend off another attack but Di had dived for the wall herself, laying facedown along it and Eziz...
Eziz had scooped up the other assault weapon, the one Ram had thrown down.
He took aim at Alina.
Ram, without considering why, leaped forward from his crouching position and shouldered Eziz aside.
But he was too late. Eziz was already firing when they connected, firing on full auto. The weapon whirred into action, clattering rounds flying so close together it was a continuous sound, like a zipper or a sheet of plastic being torn apart but a thousand times louder, the noise alone shattering his senses.
Ram rolled against the legs of the nearest bench, cracking his head against a steel-hard edge. Alina returned fire from the far end of the room, the bullets scattering everywhere, the room filling with noise and the acrid stink of explosive propellant.
Screams, shouts from both ends and the center of the room. Ram wasn’t sure where he was, exactly and who was where, until he risked peering out from behind one of the steel bench legs near his face.
The marines opened up from the doorway, firing off tight bursts, but over and over again. The noise in the enclosed space was appalling, rounds were sparking off the walls around the squad of marines.
Ram was certain he would be shot again. Utterly certain he would be hit but this time with the live rounds instead of the electronic slugs from before. They ricocheted underneath the bench next to him. Shards of ceramic, sparks from the metal bench and dust sprayed over him, the stink and debris filling his throat as he took big panicky breaths. The rounds were still firing from both ends of the room but the rate of fire grew ever more sporadic over the next few seconds.
Through all the shouting voices, he heard Sifa bellowing some battle cry that became a cry of pain or anguish before it was cut off. The acrid smoke in the air combined with the stink of fresh blood and the cloying foulness of shit.
He couldn't cower in fear while his friends were dying around him. Clearly, he was nearer the door than the rear of the room so he crawled toward the middle bench, keeping as low as he could, keeping his eyes squeezed tight, lest he get shrapnel to the eyeballs. Hoping to find Sifa. Almost immediately his hands, out in front of him, slid into sticky, warm liquid. Even before he pried open an eye, he knew he was crawling in a pool of blood.
Ram crawled forward into it, through it. The cloying stench of blood and the acrid tang of smoke filled his lungs but the shots had almost ended so he chanced lifting his head and torso up a few centimeters to look for his friends.
There were bodies everywhere. The one closest to him had dark brown skin but not much of a head.
A burst of fire ripped into his shoulder, neck and head, knocking him face down into the spreading slick of warm blood.
PART 4 – ASCENDANCE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR – AFTERMATH
There was pain. Voices. Dreams of gunfire and blood. Time passed.
“No!”
Someone hushed him, stroked his head.
“What happened?” Ram said, trying to sit up. He was conscious but couldn't see clearly. Someone was there and he was asking them a question. “Were we talking? Where am I?”
The figure resolved into a beautiful but exhausted face. “What do you remember?” She held him down with one hand on his chest.
“Milena? I remember... blood. On my face. A… training accident?”
“No,” Milena said, her voice tight with strain. “Perhaps it is good that you do not remember. You are in the medical ring, recovering from surgery to repair damage caused by injuries sustained in a firefight. Bullet wounds.”
“Wait,” Ram said, his tongue feeling wrong in his mouth. “I remember. Bits and pieces. What happened to the others?”
“Dr. Fo?” Milena said. “Can he be released?”
The tiny doctor sidled up to Milena. “Rama Seti,” he said. Dr. Fo looked awful. Huge black circles under his eyes, his skin a shade of gray-green you only normally got on universal camouflage patterns. When he spoke, the doctor’s voice was flat and lifeless. “I am glad to see you conscious.”
“Doctor,” Milena said. “He has memory problems.”
“Of course he does!” Dr. Fo snapped. Then he slumped again, too tired to maintain irritation. “We can hope you make a full recovery, back to combat efficiency at any rate. But don’t expect all your memories coming back. Good luck to you. To all of us.”
Dr. Fo slouched away. Ram sat up to watch him go and noted the doctor's white coat was soaked with blood. Before he shuffled through the door, he took off a plastic apron and dumped it into a bin beside it.
“Where's everyone else?” Ram asked Milena.
He knew it was bad when she did not meet his eye. Ram reached up felt his shoulder, his neck and his head. The stubble under his fingers told him his head had been freshly shaved, a day or two ago, and was barely starting to grow back. There were long stitched wounds over his scalp. The large clinic room smelled powerfully of disinfectant. Tow medical personnel were tossing blood-soaked bundles of bandages into biohazard waste sacks. A row of three steel gurneys lined the far wall, an orderly or some such wiping them down with liters of cleaning fluid. The floor beneath spattered pink with diluted blood.
“Who died?” Ram asked.
Milena couldn’t look at him. “Ram, it's not good. It was chaotic in the barracks, they lost control. We lost control. Thousands of rounds. Alina was an expert shot. So was Eziz.”
“Just give it to me straight, don't draw it out.”
“They all died.”
Ram looked at her. “Come on. Not those guys. Those giants. Not these bodies.”
She chewed her lips before answering. They were red, chapped, skin missing on them. “There were so many rounds fired. The investigation is almost complete and I have viewed the footage many times over. Alina and Eziz obtained assault rifles with hundreds of le
thal rounds and between them shot almost everyone. They aimed for the head. The marines shot Eziz and Alina and they shot to kill. And everyone caught stray bursts, including you. You took a couple to the side and back of the head, here and here, but they were glancing shots.”
“How long?”
“Must be around thirty hours now. No, more like forty. Dr. Fo and his team have been working without pause, fighting to save everyone we could. It looked for a while like Te Zhang would pull through but they could not save him.”
“Sifa?”
“She suffered a number of wounds to the chest trying to drag Te into cover. She would have survived that but Eziz very deliberately shot her. Some number of rounds entered around the base of her skull, destroying her hypothalamus. Bone and bullet fragments traveled through to the front of her brain. She certainly would have felt nothing.”
“Good. That's good.”
“I am sorry.”
“So the mission is over,” Ram said. “And all because of Alina.”
“Alina, yes,” Milena said, nodding. “She was the catalyst. She was the perpetrator. But it was not just her, as you know. The Director and the Chief Executive are investigating now, the preliminary report being wound up now but it is already clear what happened, to a large extent. It’s all right there, on the cameras.”
Ram lowered his voice, leaned toward her. “Do they know about... you know. Us? What we talked about right before...?”
She looked up at him then. “Everything we are saying now is being recorded so there is no need to whisper. And yes, they know. They know everything. I told them even as the actions were taking place. Our concerns about becoming Mael's victims obviously became irrelevant as soon as Alina killed him. But we were cut off. Diego had hacked the security systems, blocked communications. He stopped the ship's rotation. Alina's driver, Noomi, intentionally or accidentally took her own life in an explosion in the medical ring. She improvised a device that burned through the reserve subjects in storage, incinerating them before the fire suppression systems could stop it.”